Market-centred Interaction
Basics
Prosperity implies increasing wealth, which depends on successful businesses and continuing investment built around an ever-greater variety of specialized products and services.
Everyone benefits from economic growth, but certain people are its immediate generators. If you listen and watch them carefully, you will see that tough moments in relationships lead to the affirmation: Business is business!
They also respect certain imperatives:
- Compete to make money
- Work hard
- Grasp opportunities
- Get good deals
- Go for short-term, certain results
- Use your talents and skills
- Learn through experience
- Support markets and free-enterprise
- Develop contacts and networks
- Live the good life
Think of individuals you know who obviously exemplify the category. In doing so, remember that it is the overall pattern that counts—not any particular interaction.
More…
Work hard.
- Life is a series of challenges—rely on yourself and better yourself.
- Become good at something—develop your talents and expertise.
- Be pragmatic and instrumental: stick with what you know works.
Make Money.
- Business is business at all times—keep your eye on the bottom line.
- Make good deals and play to win.
- Look to the short-term and certain profits.
- Cut costs, seek efficiency and look for obvious value.
Choose your market.
- Find your niche, focus hard and monopolize it.
- Take risks if unavoidable, but avoid danger and minimize losses.
- Recognize competition, watch competitors closely and aim to win.
Grasp opportunities.
- Regard change as permanent and adapt rapidly to openings.
- Be sure: analyse situations rationally and dispassionately.
- Use trial and error, learn through experience—especially from failure.
Maintain independence.
- Be self-disciplined and reliable: strive to better yourself.
- Take advice but always use your own judgement: rely on yourself.
- Support markets and free enterprise—enjoy competition.
- Accept society as it is—do not try to be too far ahead of your time.
Develop a network of contacts.
- Generate contacts by engaging easily and exchanging cards.
- Stick with people you know and have worked with previously.
- Be prepared to form alliances and partnerships.
- Develop friendships without burdens or emotional demands.
- Value honesty and integrity.
Conform to the image of success.
- Radiate prosperity, support free enterprise, promote the profit motive.
- Improve your standard of living but live within your means.
- Choose the good life, enjoy material abundance: eat well, holiday well.
- Accumulate possessions—keep up with the Jones's.
Review
- Is this vision of life too limited and too materialistic?
- Is it harmful to think that money makes the world go round?
- Are these values too disconnected from society’s urgent needs?
- Is it worth having a meritocracy? winners and losers? inequality?
The fact that such questions can even be posed supports the observation that there are people who seek benefits other than money and who are unsympathetic to commerce.
If money is the object, there are more expedient ways of getting it than hard work: e.g. demanding money with threats, or setting up a Ponzi scheme—methods copied by governments everywhere.
Originally posted: July 2009